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I think you guys need to look into a lot more modern classical music. JW has some serious competitors. There are many good ones. Look beyond the movies and you may be surprised at what you find. That is all I will say on this issue.

John Williams is a good composer but not the best. His scores have too many similarities to mark him out as a genius. And if you classify a film score composer that way then you might as well add John Barry into the category or Howard Shore exept Howard Shore has wupped the butt of Williams with his LOTR soundtracks.
Can't count Danny Elfman because he's really a one trick pony. Ennio morricone would be another choice of mine in the movie score category. But then you'd have to go back toprevious decades, to the golden age of cinema and look at the body of work that guys put out for movies like Gone with the wind, Spartacus, and all the gazillions of musicals, comedies, dramas, thousands and thousands of hours of music. To say John Williams is the modern Mozart is like saying that Jim Carrey is the modern Chaplin or buster keaton. You just can't compare the two. Different classes of musician altogether. John Williams write simplistic music and Mozart wrote the most complex pieces. Williams or Mozart, Williams or Mozart..... No contest IMO. Chopin wins.

First, scruffy, I wasn't intending to get you on the spot. I was just curious if you were familiar with those two. Heartbeeps is from an obscure early 80s flick and is heavily synthesized, but once you get past that it's rather good. (You can sorta hear themes from ET, AI, and Harry Potter evolving already.) Sleepers relies heavily on electric guitar riffs, and it's one of the few Williams scores I've heard that I'd recommend passing on.

Who is out there who's better than Williams (or Shore, or Howard, or Elfman, or Zimmer, or any other film composer, for that matter)? Again, not trying to be confrontational at all. I consider myself pretty ignorant of modern classical music outside of film scores (and Frank Zappa, if you include him as a classical composer).

I think one thing that some of you are overlooking is that one of the measures of success for an artist is popularity. I'm not saying that it's right (in many cases, it's very wrong). For one thing, being the best means nothing if no one is aware of you to recognize it. And in asking if Williams will be the Mozart of our time, I think it's more a question of recognition. I think there's a good chance he will be. Howard Shore may have sold more copies of the Titanic CD (for whatever reason, since it really bites), but overall Williams has sold more and is more recognizable.

Lastly, in defense of Elfman (my second favorite modern composer ): it's easy to say "Batman sounds like Dick Tracy, which sounds like Darkman, which sounds like the Flash." And I wouldn't argue with that statement at all. But Batman does not sound like Mars Attacks, and neither sound like Edward Scissorhands, nor do any of these sound like Sommersby or Sleepy Hollow. Even though several of his works do sound very similar, I actually think he has more range than Williams, who does mainly SW-esque music.

I've always believed that popularity creates short term success but talent creates long term success. Mozart wouldn't be popular today if his music wasn't any good.

I think the one point that could keep JW from long term success is the movie soundtrack genre. Yes he does put out a great soundtrack but in 50 years who's going to care about the composer of the music for some old movies? JW is a master of carrying movies through music but does his music stand alone? I don't think any of us really can answer that. Would we be excited by the opening SW music if we never saw the movie?

A lot of the classical music I like tells a story or paints a visual picture, like Holst's "The Planets." (the opening to the Metallica cover of "Am I Evil?" comes from this piece ) Very little of each soundtrack to a movie does that for me. A soundtrack doesn't have to paint the picture, only compliment it. There are a few pieces in the SW library that do paint an amazing picture. The absolute best (albiet short) is "The Asteroid Field" from ESB. Damn fine music!

"No one helped me so why should I help you?" - College professor circa 1999

In case you guys did not know. Mozart was not popular in his time. He was despied by some people and considered impudent and vulgar. Many people considered Mozart more or less the Emminem or however you spell his name of their time.

Also, consider that in 200 years that the Rap, Rock, Jazz, etc of today will become classical because of its age. What is classical may not neccessarily be in a film score. Who knows what the people of the future will view as a genius. There is no way of telling.